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Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

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Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#101
post #94
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is similar to any phone/email/contact book app will allow you to upload or manage your address book. Your friends could leak your email address or phone number by installing a malicious app and granting the permission, do you blame Google/Apple for this?

For one, Google and Apple would remove an app from the App/Play Store if it was abusing those privileges. My Digital Life would never have passed App Store approval in the first place, since it in no way demonstrated why it needed the amount of personal information it requested. Facebook clearly had no such monitoring. Not to mention the scale of data is radically different. I'm not over the moon about someone upload…

I'm not so sure that it wouldn't have passed AppStore review back in 2011, this was way before most privacy crackdowns began. It is also the case that the app claimed that this data would be used to analyze "your digital life" AND that it would be collected for research purposes only. Play Store definitely would've let it through.

As for the quality of the data. Right now any of your friends could have apps installed that are secretly leaking your private conversations with a third party and there is no realistic way for Apple or Google to know. That information seems more sensitive than what you linked. Why are you setting the bar higher for Facebook?

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#102
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I also wouldn't put Netflix on a pedestal, I think it is in a very different category than Facebook: Netflix, you indeed lose your time but you don't have that feeling that everyone else is having a wonderful time while you are losing yours on the couch. Netflix (as TV) provides some healthy entertainment. Facebook on the other hand provides entertainment by broadcasting how perfect other people's life are. And…

> Netflix (as TV) provides some healthy entertainment. It's far from obvious that TV is healthy. This article has some discussion of one potential downside and a rebuttal: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-tv-rot-your-...

With simple logic: If TV is not Healthy, then Facebook is definitely worse as it mixes TV and broadcasts specifically the fake perfect life of people you know.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#103
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The utility_function of facebook (what it maximizes for) is for your attention grab. This in itself makes the product bad. They will hack the endorphin in your brain in order to keep you hooked. the utility_function of email is utilitarian. No email server wants to keep their user hooked on their emails.

I wish the person who replied didnt delete their comment. They asked you if you felt the same way about netflix. Are products who want to keep people hooked, and have all their attention universally bad?

I replied on another thread on this topic where the same question got raised. (TLDR: Not perfect, but definitely a magnitude better).

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#104
post #60

Throwaway for obvious reasons. Opinions are my own. I joined in the last year. I had major issues with FB before, reflecting typical HN user stance. I joined because I was curious and their promises sounded like an amazing place to work. And it is. They treat us better than any other company in terms of autonomy and input. Everyone has a tea seat at the table. And what I’ve seen, the external perceptions don’t match…

> I just don’t see tracking online activity as more harmful than the benefit that people get from the service. (Not so much US users, but the benefits to people in very poor countries are very real, and wouldn’t exist if the service didn’t monetize so well) Can't you elaborate on this? What's the difference between people in the US and poor countries? Why does tracking help the latter group?

I think he's just saying that folks in developing countries get more value of the service (developed countries have much more competition), not that they benefit from tracking more.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me disagree on this. I think You joined Facebook, and they showed you the "Employee side" where everything is beautiful, with free food and free toys and you became convinced. Yes, they treat employees super well, nobody contradicts that. But how does it change anything related to how bad the product is (and all the bad things it does to people that use it a lot). It is easy to let the beautiful inner side of Fac…

I get that you have a fundamental disagreement with the opinions expressed by this commenter, but please don’t invalidate their experience like that. Saying, “Sorry but no” is a flippant way of dismissing their experience without actually being sorry for doing it. It’s frankly not for you to say “what happened” when it comes to their opinion, which is based on what they’ve witnessed and experienced. Note that this en…

You make a good point and I edited my comment. Thanks.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#106

I would love for FB employees to explain to me how they justify that their product literally hooks fragile users to internet, creating chronic depression, FOMO etc etc. To me, it is no different than Heroin given to a Junkie. You just need to travel anywhere in the world and look at all the tourists spending their time Instagram-ing everything. On the other side of the screen you have fragile teens that get depressiv…

Lots of things can be harmful or useful based on how you use it. You can learn many useful things from the internet while there are people looking for child porn and recruiting terrorists. You can use a car to get places quicker or run people over. You can use nuclear power to generate clean electricity or make bombs.

A lot of people including me use Facebook services to stay in touch with my friends and family most of whom live thousands of miles away from me, which I find incredibly useful. People use FB groups to form a community around lesser known causes (like a rare disease or a dying language) and get in touch with people they might never have found otherwise. At the same time, Facebook can be used in harmful ways like you mentioned.

Sure, Facebook can perhaps regulate people using it's services to protect "fragile" people, but don't people deserve the freedom to do whatever they want with their time? Should we also have laws around how long you're allowed to use the internet every day because it's addicting and can be harmful?

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#107
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're written by the same journalists who are focused on maximizing revenue for their own companies? That's a pretty huge accusation to casually throw out. Where is the actual evidence that a journalist writing an article critical of Facebook is doing so because they are focused on maximising revenue for their own company? Most journalists have nothing to do with the business side of their company, and this feels…

>Where is the actual evidence that a journalist writing an article critical of COMPANY is doing so because they are focused on maximising revenue for their own company? recent example is bloomberg and their china chip hacking (did that ever turn out to be true?) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h... where the writers get compensated if their story moves stock prices https://www.businessinsid…

First, I don't think moving the price of an OTCBB stock counts.

Second, there is still the issue of accuracy, and that is even mentioned in the BI article. Bloomberg is not going to reward reporters for publishing bullshit, because it hurts the credibility of the terminal as a news source.

Third, while I wasn't in news while I was there I'm not aware of such a policy existing, and can't find anything more recent than that 2013 article.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#108
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, Google and Apple would remove an app from the App/Play Store if it was abusing those privileges. My Digital Life would never have passed App Store approval in the first place, since it in no way demonstrated why it needed the amount of personal information it requested. Facebook clearly had no such monitoring. Not to mention the scale of data is radically different. I'm not over the moon about someone upload…

I'm not so sure that it wouldn't have passed AppStore review back in 2011, this was way before most privacy crackdowns began. It is also the case that the app claimed that this data would be used to analyze "your digital life" AND that it would be collected for research purposes only. Play Store definitely would've let it through. As for the quality of the data. Right now any of your friends could have apps installed…

> Why are you setting the bar higher for Facebook?

The difference is this:

> there is no realistic way for Apple or Google to know.

There was a way for Facebook to know. The tool was using their own API, so they knew exactly what was being fetched and how often.

I'm also not sure why it matters. Let's say Apple and Google are just as bad, I don't particularly care. It doesn't make what Facebook did any less worthy of scrutiny.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are millions of people in various Facebook groups that are connected, based on things like illnesses, concerns, etc. The ability to share information and experiences and support each other are unparalleled. Just because you only use Facebook to connect with friends doesn't mean there are billions of people using it for other extremely beneficial purposes.

There were plenty of internet forums and even IRC and Usenet before Facebook. Maybe FB has pushed out other, better, places for people to gather and communicated?

There is a lot of value in a marketplace for discovery and consistent interface. Let us not echo the sentiment of the infamous poster suggesting dropbox would fail because "who wouldn't just spin up an ftp server backed by source control".

From the stance of democratizing the internet, for better or worse, I don't think we can sit here and deny the formative role Facebook played in getting people shut out from the net involved with it.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#110
A little background: I was an intern at FB just before and during the whole CA thing unfolded and I'm returning back for another internship, hoping I'll join full-time one day.

I had multiple offers from other Big-N companies and unicorn startups(some of them paying more than FB). But here's why I choose to still work at FB:

1) The values and goals of the company and the people at the company are genuinely positive.

No PMs are going around wondering how can we profit off of innocent people. Goals for teams are oriented around the "impact", for eg. how many small businesses are effectively gaining customers due to the new feature X, or is feature Y actually making people happy or if it's good for them in long term etc. An example would be Facebook trying to make more "meaning-full interactions" on the platform while sacrificing on users spending more time on the platform looking at click-baits.

2) The company and the leadership accept blame and work on fixing the mistakes.

Unlike some other fruit company, Facebook has always(although sometimes not as soon as it should have), accepted the blame for the repercussions of being the disruptive platform it is. People in leadership personally take charge of the issue and work to make the platform better. I know a lot of people believe Zuck is pure evil from what they hear, but I don't think a CEO who’s apathetic would be willing to pull the platform out of countries if the laws there don't fit with the company's morals and values. (Read - https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-privacy-foc...)

3) Every individual employee's voice is heard.

Anyone in any FB office around the world can personally ask the whole leadership any question every Friday in the company-wide Q&A. And most often than not, these questions are complicated. Misinformation on WhatsApp leading to lynchings, what are we doing about it? Foreign governments intentionally interfering in government, did we know about it and if yes what's our plan?

No question is a bad or stupid question. And yes, we get better answers than those PR statements. Knowing what happened in the technical gory details and what specific steps are being taken convinces us that necessary actions are being taken. I don’t know of any instance where the employees had to go on a strike and sign petitions to know why the company was working on some project which doesn’t align with the company’s morals.

4) Fb is doing something which has never done before, at a scale at which barely any company has ever reached.

All of us know how much responsibility we have working on such an impactful product. But that doesn’t mean we’ll stop trying new things. Those new things might not be good in the long run, but, there’s only one way to find out. If we think it’s gonna affect people’s lives positively, we’re gonna try it. Critique is expected and welcomed, even when it isn’t accurate. This may not morally align with everyone, but this is what I generally saw while working there and feel like it’s something I align myself with personally. Not being afraid to use the influence to try to launch something new and disruptive is not something everyone can agree with. And FB historically hasn’t done much research before launching products, but now seems to be taking the eventual possibilities seriously. It still doesn’t change the whole “hacking” culture of just trying out new stuff.

5) FB does care about privacy. Shocking, right?

From the limited 3 month view I have of the company, everyone is crazy about privacy. There are continuing discussions on how to deal with complicated situations, and teams dedicated to consulting other teams who might not have the necessary overview regarding the possible effects. Encryption is a hot topic, and research is being done on how bad actors can still be detected and reported based solely on the metadata, keeping the information private. And there’s no easy way to explain it, but media lately has been extremely biased against FB and reporting stories in a manner which distorts the reality of the events. Every small mistake(deliberate or not) will be exaggerated with click-baity headlines. I do believe that FB is completely responsible for whatever happened with CambridgeAnalytica, but reading some of the articles detailing it just made aware of the lack of technical knowledge and the intention to find out the bigger picture in most of the mainstream media.

6) We see the positive impact happening real time.

No newspaper will publish on the front-page about the FB communities which allowed LGBTQ people to connect in a country where’s it’s a crime. Or the fundraisers saving kids who got separated from their parents. Or the relationships which only came to existence because of the platform. Or the small businesses flourishing who previously didn’t have a chance to compete with the big dogs. Don’t get me wrong, bad things still do happen. There are instances of bullying, misinformation, stalking and a lot more. And people at FB are genuinely trying to limit that. But in the big picture, most of us do believe that we’re having a positive impact on the world. And if it’s not, we’re willing to change it, regardless of the company’s profitability.

TL;DR: Obviously I’m biased, I like that FB isn’t afraid to make mistakes and own then, genuinely think FB is doing good in the world and believe that it’s moving in the right direction.

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